


i get kinda hectic inside

by throughadoor



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughadoor/pseuds/throughadoor
Summary: Ray's latest business venture, the motel's new weekly towel limit, the most recent bout of legal trouble in Twyla's family and other things that happened when David and Patrick decided to move in together.





	i get kinda hectic inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuburbanSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/gifts).



> The show is airing a new episode after the posting deadline but before reveals, so fingers crossed that this story doesn't go up in a cloud of non-canonical smoke. Title is Mariah Carey, natch.

**cold open**

Patrick and Rachel broke up for the umpteenth and ultimately final time on Valentine's Day, because of a spatula. 

"I just … don't understand." Rachel's jaw was as tight as a clamshell and her words came out in short, punctuated bursts. "This is a spatula," she said. "You got me a spatula. For Valentine's Day."

They were sitting at the kitchen table in Rachel's apartment. It had been _their_ kitchen table and _their_ apartment until New Year's Eve, when an argument on the way home from a party led to breakup number umpteen minus one. That breakup had lasted until the first week of February. The week had started with a vague text from Rachel and ended with Patrick agreeing to meet her at two-for-one margarita night at the place across the street from her job. The morning after they collided back together, Rachel had made eggs for breakfast. She'd chided him for taking the good spatula when he'd moved out. 

Fast forward a week to Patrick staring down at the offending item in its nest of crumpled pink tissue paper. "I'm sorry," he said. "I guess I just thought, because of what you said last week--"

She cut off his explanation with a shake of her head, making her hair whip like rotor blades. "Never mind." Her burst of anger was already fizzling into exhausted defeat. "I don't know why I'm surprised. You don't have a single romantic bone in your entire body."

A sharp pain twisted its way through his internal organs. He wanted to explain that she had it all wrong. His brain churned out ideas for big romantic gestures like an assembly line at a Hallmark factory. Production came to a screeching halt when he tried to imagine a scenario where he was the one making the big romantic gesture and Rachel was the recipient. 

He thought about how to say all of that, but when he opened his mouth, what came out was, "I think I should leave," and he didn't just mean the apartment. 

 

"Just think about it," Benji argued as he handed Patrick another beer. "Maybe it's time to make a clean break."

Patrick had learned the hard way not to sign a lease on a new apartment in the first few weeks after a breakup with Rachel. Benji was a friend from college; he'd been crashing with him since the first week of January, sleeping on a crappy futon and writing business plans with his laptop balanced on his knees. So, Benji may or may not have had a vested interest in encouraging him to get a fresh start somewhere else. 

"You really think I should just pick up and move to your weird hometown? The same place that you go out of your way to never visit?" They were sitting on the aforementioned crappy futon. It had to be folded up during the day because it was the only piece of furniture in the living room. Patrick gave Benji a side-eyed look to illustrate his skepticism. "What's this place even called again?"

"Schitt's Creek," Benji said. "And, yeah, man. I really think you should move there. I don't know what the deal is, but that place has, like, no zoning regulations. People are always starting small businesses, so there'd definitely be plenty of work for you."

"I don't know, it just seems kind of--"

"Nah, c'mon, dude!" Benji slapped the lumpy futon cushion for emphasis. "You need to get away from Rachel, Schitt's Creek needs a small business consultant. It's like destiny. Anyway, my dad used to be on the city council and now he runs a startup incubator. So you'd have somewhere to launch your business and I bet he can even find you a place to stay."

 

Much later, after he'd packed up everything he owned and moved to a small town where he was a complete stranger, he got a more accurate picture of the situation. The only startups Ray was incubating were his own fledgling businesses and the place Ray found for him to stay was Benji's older brother's childhood bedroom. After a month of working out of Ray's living room and making non-committal noises when asked if he wanted to be an early investor in a new closet organizing service, Patrick was starting to think he'd made a mistake.

Then he met David Rose and his ridiculous crooked smile and his very attractive business plan. When David walked into Ray's living room, he brought a blank business license application and the keys to Patrick's whole future. 

 

**one year, ten monthly anniversaries and one unofficial breakup later**

Patrick was standing behind the cash register at the store with a big idea burning a hole in his pocket. He greeted the customer in front of him and rang up a bottle of artisanal cucumber and thyme mouthwash. The whole time, he kept one eye on the transaction and the other eye trained on the door. While he waited for the credit card transaction to process, he reminded himself that he wasn't going to spring the news on David as soon as he walked into the store. 

He made himself turn his full attention to the guy on the other side of the counter. "Thank you for visiting Rose Apothecary," he said, "and for supporting our local business partners." He handed him a bag with his $27 mouthwash. 

The guy gave him a confused look. "Can I have my card back?" 

"Uh, sure, of course." He fumbled for the credit card where he'd left it in the reader. "Sorry about that. Have a good one."

David came through the door at the same time that mouthwash guy was walking out. To Patrick's credit, he kept his mouth shut for the amount of time it took David to remove his sunglasses, air his usual grievances about the artificial sweetener selection at the café and lean over the counter to plant an emphatic good morning kiss on Patrick's mouth.

"So, hey," Patrick said as soon as their lips pulled apart. "I found out last night that Ray's son is moving home to help him start an insurance agency."

David squinted at him. "Ray's son your friend from college?"

"No, that's Benji. The one who's moving home is Amit, his older brother."

"Well, that sounds both ill-advised and extremely on-brand." David cocked his head to the side and made a face like a kid being asked to share his toys. "He's not asking you to help out, is he? Because you are very busy with the store. Extremely busy." 

He shook his head. "No, but with Amit moving back here, I need to find somewhere else to live." 

Patrick could feel his shoulders start to hunch up near his ears while he waited for David to get the hint. Instead, David peered back at him with a furrowed brow and Patrick was reminded that his boyfriend switched back and forth at random intervals from being weirdly perceptive to monumentally oblivious. 

"Oh. Okay," David said. "Do you want me to ask about a room at the motel?" His mouth twisted into a frown. "Because I can try, but I cannot make any promises. God knows why, but every time I turn around lately that place is fully booked." He leaned over the counter, propping himself up by his elbows. "Last week, Stevie told Alexis and me that she was putting us on a towel limit so there'd be enough clean linens for the rest of the guests. And, like, please explain to me how two people are supposed to get by using less than 20 towels a week, because I'd honestly love to know."

A part of him wanted to let David go to town on his diatribe about towel consumption. Watching David get worked up about something ridiculous was either very entertaining, extremely hot, or both. But there was something he wanted even more than he wanted to see David's inexplicably attractive left eyebrow twitch.

Besides, he could always make David's eyebrow twitch later. 

"Hey, hang on. Slow down," he said. He leaned over the counter and put his hands on David's shoulders. He was wearing a sweater that Patrick didn't recognize; black with big bunches of white fringe hanging from the shoulder seams like a marching band uniform. 

"I don't want you to ask about a room at the motel." He rubbed his thumbs along the ridges of David's clavicles. For a moment, he let himself get distracted trying to remember the technical term for marching band uniform shoulder fringe. Then, he took a deep breath and said, "I was thinking that since I have to find a new place anyway, maybe we could find a new place together?"

David's eyes got cartoonishly wide. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"

He left his hands planted on David's shoulders. Unable to resist the urge to mess with him a little bit, Patrick raised his eyebrows and pretended to consider the question. "That depends, are you going to say yes?"

David reached up and draped his hands over Patrick's own. "Yes!" he said, shaking their clasped hands for emphasis and making his sweater fringe sway back and forth. "Yes, I would like to move in with you."

Patrick leaned back, letting his hands slip out of David's grasp and making a show of feigning embarrassment. "Wow, uh, this is really awkward," he drawled. "I was trying to ask if you'd drive me around to look at apartments because my car's in the shop, I didn't realize you--"

David stood up, folding his arms across his chest. He gave Patrick a scolding look and let out a dramatic huff. "What I'd _like_ to say right now is that maybe I don't want to live with such a self-satisfied asshole, but you've met Alexis, so there's no way that's believable."

Patrick barked out a laugh before getting serious. "So, you really want to move in with me?" he asked. 

"Yes, I will move in with you. As long as you promise right now that I will have complete creative control with regard to the decor."

Patrick's mouth broke into a grin that felt wide enough to split his face. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

David gave him a pointed look. "I'm just saying, I do not want to find out that you have a foosball table in storage, or a canvas print of _Dogs Playing Poker_ or some other ungodly artifact from your heteronormative past."

"Of course not," Patrick said. He slid out from behind the counter so that he could pull David into his orbit. "Just a couple very small, very tasteful beer pyramids."

"See, I think that you think you're joking right now. But this is not a laughing matter."

He ducked in and smacked a kiss on David's cheek. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said, reaching up to wrap his arms around his neck. Even now, any reminder of the small height difference between the two of them sent an excited shiver down his spine. 

David's arms snaked around his waist, pasting the two of them together. "Well, good morning to me," he said, his mouth close enough to Patrick's face that his words were warm puffs of air on his cheek. 

"You don't know the half of it." Patrick squeezed David's neck and lined up their faces so they were nose-to-nose. Offering David his most earnest expression, he pressed their foreheads together like he was about to make another heartfelt declaration and said, "That guy who was walking out when you were coming in actually bought some of that overpriced mouthwash." 

 

Later that evening, they already had plans to meet the rest of the Rose family for dinner at the café. Despite David's dramatic objections, Patrick thought it was the perfect opportunity to tell them the good news.

"So, David and I have a little announcement," Patrick said after they'd given Twyla their orders. "We've decided to get a place together."

Mrs. Rose clapped her hands together. "Well, isn't that lovely?" she said. "You know, John and I shacked up together before we were married. This was after I'd left Broadway, of course, and so I was staying in David Geffen's older brother's little bungalow in Malibu and--"

Next to Mrs. Rose, Alexis rolled her eyes. "Ew, stop, no one cares," she said. Then she turned her attention to David, giving him a narrow-eyed look. "I hope you're not thinking you can just move out and take the new ceramic flat iron with you."

Uncharacteristically silent up to this point in the conversation, David blinked at her and said, "Excuse me?"

"We bought that flat iron together, David!" Alexis pursed her lips into a thin line. "I'm going to have to insist on joint custody."

"Okay, first of all." David gestured with one hand and started counting off his points with the other. The two of them were sharing one side of the booth and so Patrick inched himself to the edge of the bench seat to avoid any flying elbows. "I am about to move in with my wonderful, handsome boyfriend," David said. "So, thanks so much for your congratulations on that, by the way, you're too much. Second of all, after we move in together, I am going to host a _very_ tasteful housewarming party." 

Patrick cocked his head to the side, because that was news to him. He didn't want to interrupt David when he was on a roll, though. He sounded like he was about two or three more sputtering indignations away from an eyebrow twitch.

"Third of all," David continued, "you know quite well that you will inevitably show up without a housewarming gift, just like my last three housewarming parties and every birthday since I was twelve. So, at that point, I can just keep the flat iron and we'll call it even."

Unable to parse out any actual words in Alexis's shrieking reply, Patrick shifted in his seat and turned his attention to Mr. Rose. He'd learned over the last year that if he was looking for the approximation of a normal person's reaction from a member of the Rose family, David's father was his best bet. 

Because five people couldn't fit together in a booth, Mr. Rose had commandeered an extra chair and put himself at the nominal head of the table. Sitting there now, he had the same beneficent look on his face as the life-sized cardboard cutout of himself that had stood next to the register when Patrick had worked at Rose Video in high school. The resemblance was uncanny, except for the absence of the permanent marker mustache. 

"You know," Mr. Rose said. "With David moving out and Alexis spending so much time at Ted's place, we could finally start renting out their room."

Alexis turned on a dime to glare daggers at her father. "Uh, no thank you. I need the room for my home office."

"Well, sweetheart, if you had a regular office you might not even need a home office. I'm sure you could find something around town. Maybe I could ask Bob if my old desk at the garage is available."

"Ew!"

At that point, Patrick was glad to have the conversation cut short when Twyla showed up with their food. "Here we are," she said, sounding like a deflated balloon version of her usual cheerful self. After he accepted his plate, he said, "Uh, is everything okay, Twyla?"

She offered him a half-hearted smile. "Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm fine," she said. "It's just that Jay, in the kitchen, he likes to listen to the police scanner during his shift. And just now, I overheard something that sounds like be bad news for my cousin Darlene's step-nephew."

Patrick managed not to visibly wince and made what he hoped was a sympathetic face. It was a skill that had gotten a lot of practice during the year he'd lived in Schitt's Creek. "I'm sorry to hear that." He elbowed David in the side. "David, isn't that awful?" he said meaningfully. 

David looked up from his plate and, after a moment, realize he was supposed to be expressing an emotion in Twyla's direction. "Yes, that sounds … bad," he said. 

She shrugged. For a few seconds, her expression brightened. "Maybe there's an APB out on someone else named Roscoe Harlan Rodney III, but--" The corners of her mouth turned down again. "But probably not," she said.

 

After dinner, Alexis announced that she was going over to Ted's house for the night, so Patrick followed David back to the motel room. Lying down on top of David's bed with his arms tucked behind his head, Patrick tried not to look at the suspicious stains on the ceiling. Next to him, David was paging through a book that looked like a photo album except that it didn't appear to have any photographs inside. 

"So what's the deal with your mom and David Geffen's older brother?"

David shook his head, refusing to go along with the joke. "I _told_ you that I could just move my stuff out of the motel in the middle of the night and leave a note," he said. "But no. You wanted to tell my whole family. In person."

Patrick shifted on the bed and rubbed his calf against David's own. "What are you even looking at?" he asked. 

"It's my paint chip scrapbook."

"Your what?"

David looked up from the scrapbook with a pinched-face glare. "Laugh all you want," he said, "but this book contains fourteen out of the sixteen discontinued mistints from the Ralph Lauren mid-temperature metropolitan urban whites collection."

"Okay, but I don't understand why you're picking out paint chips. We haven't even found an apartment." Patrick reached over and managed to coax the scrapbook out of his hands. He set it on the bedside table and then rolled back to the center of the bed. He flopped himself halfway on top of David and settled his head on his chest. 

"That does remind me, though." Patrick said. He hummed with approval when David's fingers started carding through his hair. "Ray said he'd help me look for an apartment. He's even willing to waive the realtor's fee."

David's soothing motions came to an abrupt halt. "Has Ray added any units to his portfolio since he tried to get Alexis to rent that suicide den last year?"

"I have no idea."

David's choked laugh made his chest rumble under Patrick's ear. "Yeah, thanks," he said, "I think we'll pass."

 

The next morning, Patrick was picking up coffee at the café and considering the problem of how to start looking for an apartment. David's low opinion of Ray's real estate portfolio was understandable, but left them at somewhat of an impasse. The only way Patrick had ever looked for an apartment was to browse Craigslist, and the only housing post in Schitt's Creek was a three-year-old listing for a canoe. 

Twyla handed him his coffee order and he remembered her distress from the night before.

"Did everything work out okay with your cousin's, uh--" He trailed off, unable to remember the exact familial relationship.

"With Rodney?" Twyla shook her head. "He's … not gonna be around for a while. I don't suppose you know anyone who wants to rent an apartment?"

As it turned out, their good fortune was two-fold. Laundering counterfeit money through a roadside pumpkin patch was a lot more lucrative than Patrick would have guessed, because Roscoe Harlan Rodney III's apartment was in a really nice converted warehouse space a couple blocks over from the store. Plus, Twyla was 90 percent sure that no one had ever died there. 

Once they'd signed the lease on their new place, Patrick assumed that the hard part was over. They still needed to move, obviously. But, he'd put six boxes in the trunk of his car when he made the impulsive decision to move to Schitt's Creek and four of them were still sitting there unpacked more than a year later. Not to mention, all of David's worldly possessions fit into half of a motel room. Probably less than half, considering that it was Alexis taking up the rest of the real estate. 

He figured they could make a few car trips over to the new apartment on Sunday morning before the store opened and still have enough time left to go look at mattresses. He should have known it wouldn't be that simple. 

 

He was at the store unpacking the new seasonal toothpaste powders when David emerged from the back room. "Have you seen the sconces that I set aside for the apartment?" David asked. "I was going to take them over for the electrician to install, but now I can't find them."

"The what?" He looked up and saw that David's eyes were wide and his hair was mussed, but he couldn't tell if it was stress-induced or an intentional style.

"The last two reclaimed barn wood sconces, which I very specifically set aside for the apartment. But now I can't find them."

Before Patrick could respond, Mutt walked into the store. Jocelyn trailed behind him, pushing Roland Junior in a stroller. 

"Good morning, Jocelyn. Good morning, Mutt." Patrick glanced at his watch. "Thank you for only waiting until 11:07 to show up for your eleven o'clock shift." He wasn't even sure if he was being sarcastic. For Mutt, seven minutes late was downright punctual. 

Over the last few months, there'd been enough business at the store to justify hiring a part-time cashier, and somehow that cashier had ended up being Mutt. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, until he left town to join up with some friends who were living in a refurbished school bus commune outside of Austin. 

Mutt gave him a sheepish smile. "Hey, sorry about that," he said, in the kind of easy-breezy way that had made Patrick both hate and envy guys like Mutt in high school. "I was on my way here when I ran into my mom and the little guy." 

Jocelyn gave them a small wave. Then she leaned down and made one of Roland Junior's chubby little baby hands wave, too. 

Undistracted by Mutt's perpetual tardiness or Jocelyn and the baby, David eyed Mutt. "Have you seen the reclaimed barn wood sconces I was storing in the back room?"

"You mean the little hang-on-the-wall lamps?"

"Do I mean the--yes, I mean the little hang-on-the-wall lamps."

Mutt reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Well, yesterday a girl came in looking for some, y'know, wall lamps. And I remembered that we had two more in the back room so I sold them to her."

"You sold them?"

"Uh, yeah? It's a store. I thought we were supposed to sell things."

"So you sold the sconces that were in the back room with a note taped to them, a note that said 'reserved' in a very aggressive red Sharpie?"

Mutt shrugged. "Okay, when you put it that way I can see what you're getting at."

"You listen me, Mutt Schitt. Is that even your real name?" David whipped his head around to look at Jocelyn. "Did you actually on purpose name your son _Mutt Schitt_?"

She winced. "We named him Zygmunt after my grandfather. But Rollie had a hard time pronouncing it, so we started calling him Mutt."

David's only response was to stare at Jocelyn like she'd just asked him to get up close and personal with one of Roland Junior's dirty diapers. Mutt took this opportunity to inject himself back into the conversation. 

"Look, man," he said, holding up his hands in a placating way. "I'm really sorry. There's gotta be something I can do to make this right."

When David turned his attention back to Mutt, his eyebrow was twitching. But not in the way that made Patrick want to drag him into the back room. David's eyebrow was twitching in the way that made Patrick think he should have 911 pre-dialed on his phone. He set down a half-unpacked box of apple cider flavored toothpaste powders in case he needed to stop his boyfriend from murdering their only employee. 

"There's really not anything you can do," David said. "Because Katherine Padilla over in Vacheville makes locally-sourced reclaimed barn wood sconces. And when you locally source all of your reclaimed barn wood, you eventually run out of barn wood to reclaim, and then you can't make any more sconces until someone's barn gets razed to the ground!" David took a deep breath before his final pronouncement. "So unless you are volunteering to _tear down your own barn_ , there really isn't anything you can do."

 

Patrick managed to somewhat defuse the missing barn wood sconce situation by putting Mutt to work unpacking the rest of the toothpaste powders and suggesting that David take off for the day. Later in the afternoon, he found David at the motel, lying face down on his bed. 

He sat down on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on David's back. "Hey, what's going on?" he asked. "Is this because you're nervous about moving in together? Do you not want to do this?"

"Of course I want to do this." David's face was still buried in his pillow, so the words were understandable but muffled. "I just want to do it in the way that I envisioned. Which is with sconces in the bedroom, because the overhead light seemed very harsh." 

Patrick started to rub David's back in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Look, I know you've never done this before--"

"Done what before?"

"Lived with someone. You know, in a relationship."

David huffed and turned his head to the side. "Well, that just goes to show what you know. Paolo was here on an expiring tourist visa, so I had to let him move into my apartment before he'd even agree to date me. And I found out after the fact that Natalie was illegally squatting in my gallery space the entire time we were dating, which is technically kind of like living together, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Patrick said. "Okay." He thought he'd survived a lifetime of catastrophes over the course of his relationship with Rachel, but nothing prepared him for learning about the many jagged pieces of David's dating history. 

"Ugh!" David exclaimed, groaning into his pillow. "I don't even know why I'm so worked up about the sconces. What's the point of suitable lighting if I can't even decide on a paint color?"

As Patrick continued to move his hand in small circles between David's shoulder blades, an idea began to form in his head. "I actually need to go pick something up," he said. "Do you want to get started painting the bedroom and I'll meet you there?"

 

The first thing Patrick needed to do was extract a solemn promise from David not to mix Valium and paint fumes. Then, he needed to find the spreadsheet with contact information for all of the store's suppliers and pull it up on his phone. He did that while he was walking out to his car in the motel parking lot, which was why he didn't notice that he was being pursued from multiple directions by Mrs. Rose, Mr. Rose and Stevie.

"Oh, hello there!" Mrs. Rose called out. He stopped and looked up to see her striding toward him with her arms flapping like an anxious bird. 

"Hi, Mrs. Rose."

"I'm so glad I caught you," she said, reaching out to grasp Patrick's shoulder. "I wanted to see if you might know when your movers would be transporting David's things to your new abode. When they're here, I'd greatly appreciate it if they could move a few boxes for me. Just between the two rooms, it shouldn't take but a moment."

"Actually, we're not using movers, so--"

"Well, alright, if you insist. If you want to move the boxes yourself, I suppose that will be fine."

He tilted his head to the side, unsure how he'd managed to walk straight into that one. Sometimes, he looked at Mrs. Rose and realized that, if he managed to play his cards right, someday that woman would be his mother-in-law. The fact that this possibility didn't send him running in the opposite direction was one of the reasons he was totally sure that he was completely in love with her son. 

Before he could muster a response, Mr. Rose caught up with them, with Stevie hot on his heels. 

"Now Moira, hold on just a second," he said. "I told you, I have a plan for how Alexis can use the room as a home office during the day and we can still rent it out to guests at night." 

Standing behind him, Stevie mouthed the word "no" and emphatically shook her head. Mrs. Rose more vocal in her disagreement. 

"But John!" she said. "You know that since we moved here, I haven't had enough space to unpack all of my summer wigs. Last August, I was nearly forced to wear one of my Christmas wigs. In August, John! Can you even imagine?"

With Mr. and Mrs. Rose focused on each other, Stevie stepped out from behind Mr. Rose and started to lead Patrick in the direction of the parking lot. 

"So, where are you going?" she asked him. 

"Uh…"

She shook her head. "Wait, never mind, I don't care. Please just take me with you."

He unlocked his car, and she took it as invitation to slide into the passenger seat. "Everything alright?" he asked, feeling mildly alarmed. 

"The thing about working at the front desk of a motel is that you're basically a captive audience. In this case, a captive audience for an insane person whose preferred brand of torture is trying to make you pick between two identical shades of white paint. And that was _before_ whatever happened this morning."

Patrick snorted. Now that he was confident that the motel wasn't about to burn down or anything, he turned on the car and pulled out of the parking lot. "Is he still trying to decide between Rockefeller Center Rink and Vintage Ticker Tape?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The Ralph Lauren metropolitan urban whites collection."

He looked over at the passenger's seat just in time to see Stevie's eyes bug out. "Wow," she said. "You, like, really love him."

"Excuse me?"

"I just mean, you _really_ love him. Every time he ever tried to make me look at that scrapbook, I threatened to use it to give him a concussion."

Now, he was even more confused. "Has this happened before?" he asked her. 

"Remember that time David left you sixteen voicemail messages about his business license application?"

"Yeah, I recall." He left out the part where he'd deleted three videos of his sister's cat and a meditation app he'd downloaded but never used so that he had enough memory on his phone to keep all sixteen voicemails stored in perpetuity. 

"I'm pretty sure that was the same night he was choosing paint colors for the store."

"That … explains some things."

Stevie raised her eyebrows. "I guess you're lucky he was done with that part before you asked him to go into business together, huh?"

"Right," he said. Never mind that David could have been butchering a goat while wearing a tuxedo the first time Patrick had walked into Rose Apothecary and he still would have wanted to go into business with him. He knew that. From the mildly disgusted look on her face, he was pretty sure that Stevie knew it, too. 

 

A short while later, they pulled up to Katherine Padilla's address. It was a small house with a bunch of intricate-looking wind chimes hanging from the front porch. When he turned off the ignition, he looked over at Stevie. "So, I need to go talk to Katherine, did you want to--"

Stevie propped her feet up on the dashboard. "I'll just wait in the car," she said flatly. 

"Sure thing," he said. "I'll be right back."

A short conversation with Katherine Padilla destroyed Patrick's last hope of fixing the sconce problem.

"Yeah, I'm sorry you came all the way out here," she said, leaning against the door frame. She'd invited him to come in, but he'd begged off and explained that he was in a bit of a hurry. "What I gave you guys a month ago was the last of the stock I had on hand." 

"Sure, no problem, I just thought I'd check."

"Tell David I'll be in touch, okay? There's a dairy farm outside Elmdale that's going into foreclosure, so I might have a line on some more raw materials soon."

"Alright, thank you." He felt his shoulders start to slump like a Charlie Brown cartoon. "I'll be sure to let him know."

"I do have one thing I've been meaning to get in touch with him about," Katherine said. "I'm thinking about branching out into kitchen utensils. I have some samples, I wanted to send them his way so he can tell me what he thinks about selling them at the store. Would you want to take those?"

Patrick brightened at this suggestion. He might not be able to get the sconces, but nothing improved David's mood like a gift. "Yeah, sure, that would be great," he said. "Thanks so much."

She stepped away and returned a few seconds later with a long, narrow gift box tied shut with a ribbon on top. "Here you go," she said. "Make sure to let David know that I'd love to get his feedback."

He took the box and nodded. "Sure thing, and thanks again."

When he got back to the car, Stevie's feet will still up on the dashboard and her eyes were closed. When he opened the driver's side door, she turned her head and squinted at him. "Did you get your little hang-on-the-wall lamps?" she asked. 

The words made a light bulb flicker somewhere in the back of his head. "Have you been hanging out with Mutt?"

In the time that it took him to reach back for his seat belt, Stevie's gaze went from impassive to murderous. "No comment," she said. 

 

Patrick dropped Stevie off at the motel and made it over to the apartment just before dark. He found David sitting on the floor in the empty bedroom, staring at two fresh patches of white paint on the wall. 

He held out a hand to help David stand up. "How's it going?"

"Look, I know you think I'm being ridiculous."

"I don't think you're being ridiculous. I know you want our place to be nice. But I guess I just don't understand. You spent the last three years living in a motel room with wood paneling and blue cinder block walls--"

David cut him off with a dismissive sniff. "Once again, a reminder why I make all the design choices in this relationship," he said. "That cinder block wall is obviously a dark teal."

"Obviously."

"I didn't just want it to be nice, I wanted it to be better than nice. This is the first place we're ever going to live together and I just wanted everything to be, you know, perfect." 

Patrick heart clenched up in his chest. He reached out and put a hand on David's waist. "Here's the thing, though," he said. "The apartment isn't going to be perfect because you picked out the perfect paint color or found the perfect sconces or whatever. It's going to be perfect because every day I get to come home to you."

David's eyes melted, but then the side of his mouth quirked and he swatted a hand at Patrick's shoulder. "Ugh, you're the worst," he said. "It's like someone built you in a lab to star in a romantic comedy."

"You know, that's funny, because someone once told me that I didn't have a single romantic bone in my entire body."

David cupped Patrick's face in his hands and kissed him like they were in the last scene of a rom com. When he pulled back, he said, "That person was a fucking idiot."

 

 **post-credits**  

"Oh, hey, I almost forgot."

"Hmm, what?" David asked, not bothering to lift his head from where it was resting on Patrick's shoulder. They were still in the empty bedroom. Patrick had joined David in sitting back down on the floor, this time leaning up against the wall opposite the two paint swatches. 

"I went to see Katherine Padilla this afternoon. She's completely out of sconces, but she said she'd been working on something else. She wanted to send you a sample and get your feedback."

This energized David enough to sit up and shift around to face him. "Well, that's nice of her," he said. "What is it?"

Patrick leaned over and grabbed the box from where it was sitting on the floor next to the puddle of his jacket. "I dunno, let's open it and find out."

David untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Patrick's stomach dropped when he saw a set of three kitchen spatulas with reclaimed barn wood handles. 

Without any idea what a bad omen he'd just unwrapped, David held up the box like a prize. "These are amazing," he said. "They'll be a hit at the store and they're perfect for our new kitchen."

Patrick knew that he should feel relieved or idiotic or embarrassed, but instead he was consumed with an overwhelming fondness. "I love you," he said. 

David raised his eyebrows and gave him one of his crooked smiles. "I love you, too." He looked across the room and then back at Patrick. "And I will love you even more if you pretend to see the difference between those two wall colors and pick one of them to paint our bedroom."


End file.
